AlphaGo Beats Board-Game Champ “Lee” in Three Straight Matches

Google’s developed computer programme, “AlphaGo” won its third game out of five against the South Korean Go grandmaster “Lee Sedol” on Saturday, taking an unquestionable 3 – 0 lead to score a major victory for a new style of a spontaneous Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Lee Sedol, the top Go player for the past decade who is ranked 9 dan really put up a fight against Google’s AlphaGo AI program in all the three games they have played so far, out of the five games. The last two games will be played today and Tuesday to determine the final match scores. However, in the end of the third round of the battle, the AI managed to claim victory over Lee.

#AlphaGo won game 3, claims match victory against best Go player of last decade, Lee Sedol → https://t.co/MbtYm64lhL pic.twitter.com/goHJvxCPUI

— Google (@google) March 12, 2016

The 3,000-year-old Chinese board game involves two players consecutively laying black and white stones on a 19×19 board. “The winner is the player who manages to seal off more territory.”

Lee won’t be the first player in the world to be defeated by an AI. Back in 1997, IBM developed a super computer “Deep Blue” that beat the world’s chess champion “Garry Kasparov.”

Venture Beat reports that, in a press conference after the third game of the match, Lee made unexpected remarks that clearly conveyed his regret:

I don’t know how to start or what to say today, but I think I would have to express my apologies first. I should have shown a better result, a better outcome, and better content in terms of the game played, and I do apologize for not being able to satisfy a lot of people’s expectations. I kind of felt powerless. If I look back on the three matches, the first one, even if I were to go back and redo the first match, I think that I would not have been able to win, because I at that time misjudged the capabilities of AlphaGo. The second match, I think, would have been the make or break.

If you look at the beginning of the second match, the game did flow the way that I have intended, and there were a [number of opportunities] which I admittedly missed. Looking at the third match, yes, I do have extensive experience in terms of playing the game of Go, but there was never a case as this as such that I felt this amount of pressure. So I was incapable of overcoming the amount of pressure that I was experiencing.

And lastly, since I lost the third match, there is now a clear winner. However, when it comes to human beings, there is a psychological aspect that one has to also think about. So as I play the fourth and fifth match, I do ask that you continue to show interest and follow what happens.

The mawkishness that Lee expressed is particularly meaningful because it highlights how major this accomplishment is in the world of Artificial Intelligence.

“Watching great Go players was like watching a thing of beauty,” said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder. “I’m very excited we’ve been able to instil this kind of beauty in a computer.”

Facebook CEO and Co-Founder, Mark Zuckerberg congratulated Google for their historic milestone in AI research.